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Archive and Backup on Oracle SL150

DeMensen is one of the biggest independent TV production companies in Belgium. Founded in 2001, it currently has 120 employees producing everything from reality TV to game shows, documentary, drama, feature films and TV advertising. Public and private broadcasters are their biggest customers.

In 2014, DeMensen switched from video tape to LTO tape for file based delivery. To facilitate this, system integrator VP Media Solutions installed an end-to-end workflow to suit their needs.

CatDV MAM catalogs all files and is connected via the QLSArchive middleware to Archiware P5 Archive as master Archive. That way, users can trigger archive and restore jobs in CatDV. For maximum security, P5 Archive is used to create two identical tape sets, one of which stays in the Oracle SL150 library while the other goes in the safe.

Editing is done on 10 Mac workstations running AVID Media Composer 10 suites. All rushes are archived using the Archiware P5 interface. For that purpose, hard disks are connected directly to the P5 server.

To keep storage usage low, footage is transcoded to DNxHD120 for editing. When completed, the resulting EDL is used to restore the original footage from LTO tape for color grading. ArchiveAssistant, an add-on to P5 Archive, assures that only the files used in the edit are restored.Backup to LTO is a routine process for all productions using Archiware P5 Backup. Every file is written to two LTO-6 tapes. Again, one tape stays in the SL150 library, the other one goes in the safe for maximum security.